Hello My Old Heart
by shiny happy fits of rage
Summary: Despite all of her strengths and shining roses, she had an inability to die peacefully. a wallyxartemis two-shot.
1. act i

I don't know where this story came from. I started writing this months ago, and then I think I lost the file or something. Either way, I didn't touch it until about a month ago. Even though it is horribly sad and depressing, it is kind of my baby. I'd desperately appreciate feedback on this. Also, please note that I am not in any way possible trying to glamorize cancer or terminal illnesses such as this. I also kept the specific disease she has as vague as possible, mainly because I know so little. Additionally, this is not in any way related to_ The Fault in Our Stars_: the only link between the two is the cancer and the cannula, and it was not my intention for this to be a TFIOS au of any sorts. Thank you.

(also, in case anyone was wondering, the second half of this will be up no later than next tuesday, August 25th!)

* * *

_**~prelude~**_

Red Tornado assures him that her medical condition has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Artemis spends 103% of her time at physically straining herself as much as she possibly can.

Rather, the universe just seems to hate her so much that, after all she's done, killing her in the worst possible way (_and by worst possible, he means smothered in blankets and without honor, without a scream of rage nor spear like he knows she'd revel in going out in_) seems fit. After all she's gone through, it is blatantly cruel.

After all _he's_ gone through, it's blatantly cruel.

In fact, Wally treats the whole situation like a personal insult, and in the precious few moments he is not cross-legged by her bed, he stalks around the mountain, cursing wildly and recklessly anytime his team so much as speaks to him.

And meanwhile, her monitor beeps like the last chapter of a long-loved book; completely normally, but with its ending so subtly hinted at that your own heart speeds up until it implodes.

_**~medical bay~**_

They sit outside the medical bay and watch as Black Canary makes notes and talks with Batman. There is glass in the way, but to Artemis, she imagines that their voices are hushed. Loud voices could not coexist with this life, this body, this disease.

"You're dying." Wally's voice comes, uninvited like the pizza guy you thought you paid but apparently deserves a tip. Quiet and raw, it breaks both the silence and her heart in a single blow.

This conversation has been waiting, ever so ominously, for days now. It was born in the shockwaves of her confession and festered when she avoided him for as long as two people cohabitating one mountain can, because even her diagnosis killed her less than this goddamn boy and his hollowed breathing did. Now, she watches as Black Canary inspects the vial of her blood, her hateful, useless blood, and sighs heavily. "We're all dying, Wally."

"Fuck you Artemis, you know what I mean." She doesn't know how to respond to that - _since when does Wally swear at her, he swears, but never at her_ \- and blinks at him. He clenches his fists and flattens then against his forehead but the tension does not dissipate and she imagines running a hot iron over his fingers until they relax, and melt, and she can melt with them -

"How could you not tell me?" he says suddenly, harshly, staring at her, and his eyes are scrunched. She feels like she's in one of those nightmares where everything goes wrong but you're still running at an infinitely slow speed and can't fix it. "How? Like, I don't - you know damn well that if I had cancer I would _tell_ you, Artemis, because that's what people in _relationships_, or people who are remotely friends do, they tell each other when one of them has cancer that _cannot be cured_."

"Gee, thanks for the pep talk," she hisses - _why is she upset, she knew all of this since the first doctor appointment and her mom cried _\- and stands up. She fidgets with the bracelet Megan gave her when she turned sixteen and debates storming away dramatically (_everything she knows about dying slowly comes from stupid movies she watched with her mom). _But she knows she can't because, like Klarion and his cat, the stupid equipment that the doctor shoved at her, along with an information sheet she never read, is the only thing keeping her in the physical world. She settles for turning away instead. "Thank you for this _delightful_ chat, really. You're so great at making people better, Wally, truly one of your greatest talents. Why don't you go ahead while you're at it and call my mom? She needs it."

He blanches like she slapped him. "Artemis -" He reaches out, and it is only then she realises how badly he's shaking.

But she shakes her head and grabs her chains and turns on her heels, because if she stays any longer with him she'll crumble.

**_~somewhere beautiful~_**

In a way, the Cave is nothing short of a paradise.

There is the ample space, to begin with, hallways that she can wander down and be so totally alone. And there's a kitchen that is _perfect_ for dancing in when the radio is staticky and too loud and there are ice-pops to be had. The television has countless channels, but more important is the DVD player, which is used so heartily it could be classified as abuse.

And the _beach_ \- going to the beach is no longer driving in a hot car next to a sister who pokes her and behind her father and his dark glasses or her mother and her worry lines. Going to the beach is running out onto the sand and pressing her palms into Wally's shoulders as he twirls her around and plummeting into the ocean and being so utterly _free_.

And so, if she is going to die, the Cave is an excellent place to do so.

Missions are the first things to be taken from her, which is absolutely absurd to her. If she is going to die either way, why delay the inevitable and stop her from doing the one goddamn thing she has?

_She voices this opinion and M'gann starts crying and Kaldur avoids her eyes for a solid day, and so she stays quiet._

Even though she is off the Team for all-intensive purposes, she refuses to leave the Cave, although thoughts of her mother home alone make her feel physically ill (_no time to be selfish like the minutes before you die_). She'll be okay, she tells the Team as they depart for their first archer-less mission. She has their DVDs and its beautiful out and she can make them pies or something if she gets bored.

It's fun, at first. She sits out on the beach and rereads _The Golden Compass_ for like the eighth time, and then she rewatches _The Great Mouse Detective _and _Moulin Rouge_ (_the latter she can only bear to watch once, because in the florescent lights left over from the hospital, the ending is suddenly too horrifying a possibility)._ When she marathons the _Spider-Man_ movies, she is able to enjoy them without Wally pointing out every single plot hole and Robin's jokes and Connor asking countless questions. She turns the music up so loudly in the kitchen that the very walls of the great mountain shake with ACDC, and when Red Tornado asks how she is, she says she's great, and for a second, it isn't a lie.

But then the singular turns into the plural, and she is retracing her steps each day, and her life is defined by spurts of energy followed by heartachingly long periods of solitude, and when she says goodbye to the Team before they go on missions, there's another archer with them, because Red Arrow thinks that now she has fucking cancer it's a great time to make amends. She rewatches movies and mutters the comments under her breath that her friends would make and rereads the same books and relistens to the same albums, and it is with a shudder that she realises she is not living but reliving.

Yes, it is indeed a paradise.

**_~raggedy man~_  
**

The place she loved his hands to be most was in her hair, especially when they were knotted in her locks and she felt his fingers against her scalp.

This has been made especially easy after she cut off her hair.

Artemis, sitting on her bed wearing her sports bra - _ha. As if she needs it anymore_ \- and a pair of sweatpants, closes her eyes as Wally runs his hand through the ghost of her golden ponytail. "I can't believe it's gone," he mutters.

She snorts. "What a tragedy." Absentmindedly, her fingers travel up to her nose and she touches the cannula, which is ever the more _blatantly obvious_ now that there isn't a gold curtain to hide it. "But I – it didn't matter, Wally. You know that, right?"

"Of course, and I'm not saying that it does," he says, throwing up his hands like she's pointing a gun down his throat, and she laughs and takes his hand and presses her lips to his palm.

"I just thought your hair was like... well, I thought it mattered to _you_," he says, a little subdued. Lightly, he tugs on the end of a piece of her hair, which just barely tickles her chin now.

"Hair is pretty," she admits, playing with his pointer finger. He has a blister on his fingertip that she didn't know about. "But temporary. And..." She wasn't looking at him before, but now she really _does not look at him_, focusing on a scar on his pinkie he got from an Exact-o blade in 7th grade shop. "I... when they start treatment – which is by the way _totally _pointless because – anyway, you know how it – it'd just be such a mess if it was the length it was and falling out. This way, it just… falls out quietly." With sudden vigor, she throws herself down on her bed (_getting herself tangled in the damn tube that is her lifeline_) and groans. Wally, _thank God for this person_, doesn't immediately comfort her, and she is able to clench her eyes shut and shudder and think for a few moments by herself.

After a few moments, she opens one eye. He is still standing, a muscle jumping in his jaw. She makes an apologetic face. "I guess I'll never win America's Next Top Model, huh," she mumbles, a stupid joke that doesn't deserve him.

Wally extends himself and lies down next to her. "You're beautiful," he says almost violently. "You know that, don't you? Like, wow, Artemis, you are so, so _pretty_."

"But temporary," she says, and she's almost whining, but she's earned the right, hasn't she?

He stares at her for several moments, and then he rubs his face with his hand and leaves it there. "But temporary," he agrees, and she ends up having to wipe his tears away with the back of her hand.

It's the first time she's seen him cry.

_**~to drive~**_

"We're going out. Driving. Now."

Artemis blinks wearily at the face above her, with the set in stone smile and the eyebrows raised just enough so that every expression is set to a mocking tune. Zatanna blows a wide pink bubble of gum into Artemis's face and pops it just as the gum, frightfully thin and sticky, grazes her nose, barely missing the cannula. She frowns and sits up, wiping the gum off with a throw blanket.

"In case you haven't noticed, there are several problems with that plan," grumbles Artemis. She yanks the sweater that's slipping down her arm back up to her shoulder, the one with that's grey and thin and not used for keeping her warm so much as preventing others from asking her repeatedly if she's cold, because she cannot stand seeing Robin bring her blanket after blanket when she knows she'll never be warm. Self-consciously fingering the edges of the bandana on her head (_blue with white design, M'gann gave it to her and it smells like lavender_), she huffs out an annoyed puff of air. "Namely, neither of us can drive, _you_ aren't even old enough to get your permit, and it's like midnight and also we will die." She hesitated just a second before plowing on, hating herself with every syllable she breathed. "I'll die anyway, but, yeah."

Zatanna however is not phased, and maybe it's just because she, as a person, is generally unphaseable. Or maybe it's because Artemis holds in these dismal little observations all day and (_between Kaldur's quivering shoulders and Robin's desperate soap bubble of an idea that she can salvaged and Wally's hand that grips her own both too tightly and not nearly tightly enough_) her best friend is the only who hears them and is therefore used to swallowing and moving on. Either way, Zatanna says cheerily, "We all die, in the end. And it's only eleven forty-two _exactly_, so please don't be my really crotchety grandmother. In case you haven't noticed, Happy Harbor isn't Gotham City. There's going to be no one out driving right now. Except us."

"And the police," says Artemis. "It's dark out. I'm tired. I am going to sleep."

Twenty minutes later, Connor, whose face is a rather amusing mixture of the annoyance of an older brother and the distanced bewilderment of a parent, pulls over on the side of a road that extends from the gas station to the horizon, the one that makes Artemis really appreciate the difference between dark (_the sky, the silky touch of stars on her lips and the moonlight on her skin) _and black (_the lack of light that melds the trees and the hills and the cities into one silhouette_). She crawls from the passenger seat to the driver's seat, lugging her equipment with her, and stares down the steering wheel, and Zatanna leans over her shoulder and reminds her unnecessarily which pedal is which. Connor gets back into the car on her right, and she snickers when he checks to make sure her seat belt is buckled, but she is still when he says, "You'll be fine," and doesn't look away. She takes a final pre-driving breath, and presses her foot to the pedal.

When the diagnosis falls into her hands like a grenade, her hands the only thing keeping the pin from falling out – _but they're sweaty and useless and slipping _– she gives up a lot of plans. One of them is driving. Because what's the point of getting her permit when, in the time it takes for her to legally be able to drive, she will fade so noticeably that the girl in the photo taken at the DMV will cease to be relevant?

But she forgets about the photo and the DMV and the grenade when she races down a stretch of lonely highway, and Zatanna shrieks joyfully and Connor whoops into the night, and she grins as the wind whistles through her teeth, and everything is okay again.

_**~crumble~**_

Artemis stops keeping her door closed at night.

The shut door became a habit when she shared her room with Jade, because all Jade ever was and ever will be was a doorknob that won't turn and light shining through the crack at the bottom. It turned into a necessity when _Jade and Mommy and Daddy and me _slowly shed layers to reveal _Daddy_ _and me_, because her father always had new training ideas and Artemis always had homework that had to be done and bruises that could not heal fast enough.

But now her mother sits in the kitchen outside Artemis' door at night, drinking tea and pouring over her scrapbooks and kindergarten projects as if she is already gone. Her mother sits in the kitchen and her back, which is always straight, slowly folds into itself until her head is on her knees and her pleas trickle down to her toes.

Artemis stops keeping her door closed at night, and she stomps around and flushes the toilet repeatedly and leaves the sink on running so she will be reprimanded, and she takes up as much space as possible (_until she crawls under her covers and lets herself shrink_). When she stubs her toe, she shrieks and groans loudly enough so her mother wheels herself into her doorway, because she has finally come to realization that the only people whom pain exists for is the living. And she so terribly wants her mother to know she's alive.

It doesn't change anything, but it's nice to feel like she tried her hardest.

_**~not an outlier~**_

Truthfully, Artemis really does not know what everyone expected to see when she arrives at the Cave at nine am on a Saturday morning, the day after her news spilled like boiling acid. Apparently, it wasn't her sitting on the counter eating a granola bar as she rolls her eyes at Wally's pitiful attempts to hit on her (_never mind that she went to junior prom with him and kiss_ed _his pulse in his neck like it was something worth saving_). Kaldur looks askance and all too wary when he walks into the kitchen, hesitates, and then continues just as she lightly flicks the back of Wally's head because of a pitifully bad joke.

Of course, today the jokes are pitiful because Wally keeps clenching and unclenching his fist, and he won't look at her, but there's nothing she can do about that. He, after stumbling over a punchline to a joke she _knows _he has down, mumbles "I can't –" and pushes his way out of the kitchen. She watches him go, but the combination of the wires and tubes that are now a part of her along with her inability to do anything for him (_because she is his problem right now_) keeps her seated.

Kaldur's eyes don't change color, but they seem darker than usual. "Don't take this the wrong way, Artemis, but… you seem happier than you should be."

She shrugs, and she blows out a breath of air that she hopes he mistakes for a laugh, and she tries to be as light as possible. "Oh, yeah. Why should I be happy?"

"I didn't –"

"No, I know. I'm just kind of an asshole." She rubs her hands over her face. "Sorry. But, uh… no, I'm not happy. I'm just…"

_She sits in her bedroom, after coming back from the doctor's, and stares at the walls, at the faded squares where posters and calenders once hung and the indents in the carpet from desk chairs. Her mother's wails reverberate and in ten minutes a neighbor who will move out before the year's end will bang on the ceiling and demand quiet. She fingers her nail and looks at everything she owns, and it slowly occurs to her that everything she's ever had has been short-term. Her father. Her sister. Her mother is on and off. The clothes. The bruises. The dolls that shattered too quickly and her bows that snap as they pierce matter soundlessly and the fireflies that lit up her window one summer night when she was ten were all in and out of her life like soap bubbles._

"I've accepted it," she mutters. _Accepted_ isn't really the word she's looking for – she's _accepted defeat_, that's what she is trying to convey. "What's the point of, I don't know, freaking out… I'll be dead before Christmas either way."

_Everything has always been short-term. It's only natural that she should be as well._


	2. act ii

sorry for the delay, everyone. As usual, I would desperately love some feedback on this, thanks :D

* * *

_**~interlude~**_

She knew because she woke up one Saturday night and the city sounds had faded and the room she was in wasn't _dark_, it was _nothing_, and where was the air, and her entire being were burning and twisted, withering, _oh, God, this is how it ends, this is her well-deserved fiery death_ -

And if her mother hadn't come into check on her just a few moments later, who knows what would have happened to her - _would she have exploded, or the opposite, turned into nothing but a rib cage and a scorched heart? _\- because she didn't have the will or the ability to scream anymore.

A faceless doctor tells her the truth and Artemis can only lie there, utterly stupefied. She listens to her mother begin sobbing and she mechanically responds to any stimulus with the proper motions, but inside she -

Well, truthfully, she is just baffled. She is Artemis, the archer of the night, the graceful and battle-wearied fighter with the sinewy muscles and well-worn boots. She fought the Joker. She helped to take down the single most successful attempted infiltration of the Justice League. She survived her father.

How can a few rampant cells take her out of commission?

_And maybe she is sad, too, grieving for a diploma and a house with a wraparound porch and a life that was never hers, but so easily could've been._

_**~in case of emergency~**_

The calendar is tearing from where it hangs, nailed to her wall, but her resolve is not. When she wakes up, she clenches the red Sharpie in her hand and grimly crosses off another day. It occurs to her later that each one of those days was the last time she would experience that particular date. The idea is sad, of course, but it quickly slips from her mind when the doctors visit and needles are unsheathed and gloves are snapped to wrists.

_A lot of things slip from her mind, though_.

M'gann makes a sort of strangled sound when Artemis explains it. "But are… is that _safe_?"

The idea of anything being safe anymore is so far-fetched that Artemis snorts. M'gann flushes and tries again. "I mean – oh, Artemis, I want you to be with us as long as possible but no one will begrudge you for letting go when it's natural –"

"No," she snaps, and it is a testament of how much time M'gann spends in the cramped and ragged room that she does not flinch. "There is no way I am dying a week before Wally's birthday, which means I have to survive past it, which means I have to survive past Thanksgiving, which means I have to survive past Christmas, which means I have to survive past our annive –" She snaps the clip off the Sharpie cap in her hands without meaning to. "I have to –"

"You don't have to do anything!" says M'gann, her voice shriller than it usually is. In one rushed, surging movement (_that somehow still manages to be graceful and pristine because that's who and what M'gann is)_, she is kneeling beside her bed, and suddenly Artemis is staring at green knuckles that are clenched and tight, covering her own chapped hands. "Artemis…" whispers M'gann. "We – everyone is going to be okay, you know that right? Like… obviously, it will be horrible, and hard, and I love you so much…"

Artemis eyes her friend (_her dear, oldest friend, her best friend who flashed her knowing glances and giggled and hugged her when she least wanted it but most needed it_), who has stopped, broken down on the side of the road, blinking rapidly. "You're not doing a very good job of convincing me you're going to be okay," she says critically.

M'gann smiles and breathes out, and it's almost like a laugh. "We, we love you, and I can't imagine you, you not – not being _here_, but… I promise, I _promise_, we'll… we'll be okay, we'll figure it out. Don't worry about – you shouldn't feel obligated to stay because of us."

But the carpet gets wet anyway, and Artemis watches M'gann gather her frayed ends into a neat bundle and leave, and she knows more than ever that she must live to see the New Year.

_**~but not really~**_

She is sitting outside her apartment building, on the cracked and chipped stone steps, when her sister walks up to her with two cups of coffee.

It is the most unexpected thing to come out of this disease, and yet, Jade being Jade, it makes perfect sense that her sister would decide to make amends a month before Artemis' EFD (_estimated final day_) by buying her a cup of Starbucks.

It also makes perfect and imperfect sense that Jade would, after a few moments of studying the girl with the blood red bandana and the jeans with the holes in the knees and the beeping equipment next to her, would proclaim, "You look fucking awful."

Artemis is too bewildered to do anything but bob her head briefly, as if she is agreeing with the blatant insult (_she is, though – Artemis has never looked more terrible in her short, stupid life)._ Jade presses one of the cups of coffee into her hand and she shudders at how hot it is."Uh," she says. "Hi Jade."

"Is Mom home?" asks her sister, checking the cell phone in her pocket, the phone that couldn't possibly have been purchased with any money except the money she earned from the Shadows, the phone that she had not once bothered to use to call Artemis, or their mother, who has never shown it but bites her lip when she watches the news and sets out an extra stocking every year in case the prodigal daughter decides to return, even though survey says that she never will. She is as casual as if the coffee was the only thing that had taken her away from their apartment, as if she had been gone for minutes instead of lifetimes. And Artemis remembers that this is the sister that left her in a house with a father who didn't care how much she hurt and who didn't care when her birthday was, and this is the sister who _left her_. She stands and shakes and, in a moment of brilliance, throws her cup onto the ground and watches the coffee seep into the sewer.

Jade is not phased, which only serves to make Artemis angrier. "You don't like decaf?"

"Why are you here?" demands Artemis, clenching her fist and standing up with more effort than she cares to admit. "_Why_? What could possibly make you think that a stupid cup of coffee would make up for everything you've done to me, to Mom?"

"Mom told me about your – your condition." Jade is forever the assassin, the calm one, the cool and smugly confident one, but even Cheshire cannot hide her stumble over the word _condition_, the nervous fidget.

"So, you hear that I'm dying and you think that it's the perfect time to make amends?" snaps Artemis nastily. "As if you care. _You left us_. You're – you're just like dad."

Her sister's face darkens and she almost lunges at Artemis. "I am nothing like that _him_. Do you know Dad has known for _months_ that you're sick?" This is new, and surprising yet not surprising, and Artemis stops, blinking. "He – he has seen me at least once a week for, for months and he hasn't bothered to mention that you – that my sister –"

"He didn't mention it because he didn't think you'd care," says Artemis, and she's delighted when Jade looks as horrified as Jade can get. "You haven't shown _once_, Jade, that you care about this family – about me, or Mom, at all, so why – why would he tell you? You – you're just as bad as Dad."

"Shut the _fuck_ up, I –"

"You are!" She has hit a nerve and she continues on, delighted, invigorated. "You are worse than Dad because you could've done something to help me and you didn't, you _never did_. He - you had a choice and you chose yourself over me, over our family! And Dad is an asshole but I could have – I might've been okay if you had stuck around, Jade, but you _didn't_, and at least Dad would never come back here and pretend to care about me! You're just here for yourself because it – because you feel _guilty_, and that's so, that's so messed up, Jade, and I hate you. I _hate you_!"

The words ricochet off the brick buildings. She is screaming now, and crying as well, which is so stupid that she feels herself start to cry harder. Taking deep, gulping breaths, she wipes the tears away from her face and forces herself not to wince when they burn her skin. Her sister's face has reset, clicked back into the blank neutral that makes Artemis shiver. After a few moments of horrific stillness, she shrugs. "If you don't want me here, you only had to say so," she says simply, and she turns and walks away.

The night swallows Jade so easily (_enveloping her is a habit of the darkness_), but as she slips away, Artemis suddenly sees her mother in the cold living room, writing another card that will never receive a reply, and her insides spasm because _how could she be so selfish_. "Jade!" she yells, hoarsely, but like always, there is no response other than the relative silence of the street.

_The glass slides up less quietly than expected and the figure slips in, and she stands by her sister's bedside and presses her lips to where hair once was. When Artemis wakes up, she frowns at the books that are open to pages they weren't last night, but assumes it was the breeze sweeping in through the open window._

_**~every you, every me~**_

Wally arrives in her room at 2:34 am carrying a bouquet of stems and a jagged-edged heart.

By her room, of course, she means the hospital room she currently exists in. After her collapse in her kitchen – _broken glass, orange juice spilling from her head like strange blood, a window of light that illuminates her shadow puppet bones_ – it is like they have suddenly lost their faith in her ability to function like a normal human being. Which is not only aggravating because _no_, she does _not_ need someone to bring her a goddamn glass of water, but also because in a way she has to admit they are right. Normal, healthy human beings do not host previews of their own deaths on the linoleum floor.

Now, Artemis pretends to smell the broken flowers (_they died in a whirl of whiplash and hundreds of miles per hour_). Wally sits and pretends to be invisible every time a shadow crosses the light from the hallway that shines into her dark, nighttime room, as visiting hours do not extend into the gentlest hours of the night, even though that's when she needs it most. They both pretend they're not in a hospital. They both pretend this isn't the first Valentine's Day Wally actually remembered. They both pretend it's not the last.

"These are lovely," murmurs Artemis after the nurse walks by. She waves the stems with the broken flower heads and leaves in front of her nose. "Absolutely exquisite."

He rolls his eyes, but it isn't harsh and the soft set of his jaw lets her know that he, for once, is content. "Wow, Artemis, you're so funny! What a joke! I'm so amused!"

She snickers. "Did I hurt your feelings?"

"I just think that this is the first time I have ever remembered Valentine's Day, in the history of not only our relationship but also my existence, and I should be commended instead of criticized."

Artemis smiles at him, and gently swats his knee with her broken flowers. "Come here," she murmurs, scooting over in the bed that is altogether more comfortable than she'd predicted. He doesn't hesitate, but is exceedingly gentle as he crawls in next to her, carefully moving his body as to not disrupt the wires and tubes that protrude from her skin (_she almost wishes he would rip them out, all of them_). Lightly, carefully, she kisses his nose, then the corner of his mouth and then, finally, slowly, his lips, and his right hands finds its way to her head and the kiss deepens and if she ignores the IVs and the beeping it is like they're back in Wally's room and when he rises she'll be able to get up with him –

"There," she says when she breaks away. "There's your commendation."

He blinks slowly at her, and suddenly sighs heavily, sitting up but not leaving, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand, and she stiffens because it's secretly her favorite thing he does and it makes her insides wriggle and her eyesight hazy but in the way not induced by medicine, the way that's sweet and natural and thrilling. "I wish…" he says distractedly, and then shakes his head. "Never mind. I just… I have never wanted to believe in an after-life more than I do right now." He winces. "Sorry if that's a shitty thing to say."

She doesn't freeze as much as _halt_. It is the first time she has ever heard him speak of his faith, or lack thereof, and it makes her uncomfortable, because they can't talk about his atheism without talking about her atheism. Or lack thereof. And although Wally is _Wally_, and his skin cells are the ones tossed up in her blankets and his eyes are the ones that watch her as she rages and whimpers (_as much as she can without hurting him_), Artemis suddenly feels awkward, afraid. "Well… yes, that would be what we like to call _shitty_, but… um, yeah."

He nods seriously, and his fingers are playing with the edge of her blanket. "Do – uh, well. Do you –"

"Yes," she whispers, and it sounds almost _dirty_ coming from her mouth, and she's very nearly ashamed, which is stupid. Because it's her own faith and who gives a damn if he thinks she's stupid and naïve, even though she's always liked being the smart one, the one that knows when something's so wonderful that it's fake and when something's so horrific it couldn't be anything but true. "Yeah, I do. _Something_ has to happen after death, and I… _have _to believe, I think, at this point. For the sake, you know, not going crazy. Because if I'm just a collection of cells, just a body, a body that by the way kind of sucks, I – I don't know. This… this _can't_ be the end."

Tonight is just full of _firsts_. Her hushed words, blinking in and out of focus, are the first hopeful ones she's spoken in months, the first ones that acknowledge any possibility for her other than oblivion. Encouraged by her own daring, she shoves on, in stops and starts, "And Wally – when I, if there is a, you know, _heaven_, or reincarnation, or _whatever_, I swear –"

"Same," he says back. "If it's real, I'll – I'll find you." She loves him because his voice is burned off in the same places hers is, and she loves him because he's talking about something that's an impossibility for him without treating it like a joke, and she loves him.

_**~ending~**_

_She tried so hard, she really did. The days seeped and stewed and turned into frothy never endings and hours of sleeping without dreams, only to wake up to find her mother's hand on Wally's shoulder. There was no light in a tunnel, but there were blurry, sleepy thoughts, gently telling her about how quiet it could be, and how peaceful, and how dark and lovely. And even when the thought got louder and when it screamed, she ignored it to blink at the boxes and the twisted game of tic tac toe on her wall. It was with a grim sort of victory that she realized she was winning._

_But in the end, there was nothing left of her body to hold on to, and when the ambulance crashed through her bedroom door and the sirens wailed and held her hand and promised they'd be okay, three days before Thanksgiving, she wasn't too surprised. She sighed and let herself be carried upwards and she forgot what her room was the moment she disappeared through the door._

_**~postscript~**_

The funeral, he admits to himself, is rather lame.

Which is a terrible thing to think, and Wally hates himself for even allowing the thought to evolve from a vague feeling of annoyance. (_Of course, by "hates himself" what he really means is that he despises himself a few shades more than he already did during the previous moment, because every exhale tastes like things he should've done and every inhale sounds like regret_). But think it he does, as he shuffles his feet while staring at the corner of an oak coffin smaller than anticipated. They had predicted a snowstorm for last night but the grass, frozen and hard under his feet, is only lightly dusted. The day isn't overcast as he had hoped, but shining, and the man giving a speech (_whom he has never seen before in his life_) is squinting because of the sun. There aren't even any clouds. It is, for practical purposes, a gorgeous day. He is not only offended by this but disappointed, because Artemis loved rain, and overcast days, and clouds, and as much as she was the most accurate explanation for _sun kissed, _she was happiest when it poured. And for the universe not to give her that (_he has to keep reminding himself that she is not actually at the funeral_) seems – well, it seems spiteful.

Regardless, her funeral is inexplicably boring, but boring in the sense that he feels sick to his stomach, boring in the way that he expects his life will be for the next few months (_years, decades, centuries_) – predictable, never ending, and the ground constantly looks like a good place to be. When they lower the coffin, he remembers suddenly that Artemis had wanted to be cremated, and he swears and starts to cry again, because in her final, single digit countdown hours, she had asked for so little, so goddamn little, and he couldn't do it. And he wonders if someone else would've been lucid enough (_in the horrible purgatory between her life and her funeral_) to make sure she was thrown into fire and tossed into the wind, and then he feels ashamed because he is making her death about him (_but that's human nature, isn't it_?).

When the ceremony ends, he leaves quickly (_the idea of Kaldur giving a speech and seeing Dick cry shakes his spine_). It isn't hard to find a tree to shove his civvies behind, and it's even easier to yank his goggles over his head and wince when they snap around his eyes a little too hard. Batman's voice is in his head, and it is growling the same words he growled at them this morning, words like _low profile_ and _clear head_, but he is far enough away from the black and grey (_of both the cowl and the funeral_) that they do not seem relevant anymore.

He runs. It makes it into the newspaper (_because, since she's gone, nothing can go right anymore_) that Kid Flash was spotted tearing alongside a highway near Gotham, almost recklessly, and Uncle Barry rubs his face but doesn't have the heart to yell at him, but he doesn't care about that right now. All he focuses on is reminding himself that he doesn't believe in an afterlife, that there is no such thing as neither heaven nor hell, that the soul is a concept conceived by people yearning for an explanation, because with the wind burning his cheeks and the sun in his eyes, he can almost feel her near.


End file.
